LITERARY SUCCESS BECKONS:
A coterie of journalists at The Courier-Mail in Brisbane has made literary history by being invited to nominate for this year’s coveted Booker Prize for fiction.
The annual prize, worth 50,000 pounds, is normally restricted to new works by Great Britain or Ireland authors but trustees have for the very first time decided to invite an outsider to compete and they’ve selected STACIA IN POLL SLUMP SHOCK, by Jack McKay, et al. It was also published in paperback form as BATTLE for PREMIER: Poll result you never saw coming. (at top).
The work, said to be of the increasingly popular fantasy/humour genre, was published on April 22. In a brilliant stroke of marketing, it was disguised as content in Newscorp Australia’s Brisbane monopoly daily, with excerpts published online the day before.
A spokesperson for the Booker Prize Foundation told The Bug from London: “I hope people don’t think we’re simply copying the Eurovision song contest here by inviting a Down Under entry. They never have any chance of winning but we reckon STACIA IN POLL SLUMP SHOCK is going to be a red-hot contender for our coveted 2023 award to be announced in October.
“We can’t, of course, know what our Booker judges are going to decide but the entire office here can’t stop chuckling over this debut effort by Jack McKay and his colleagues. It’s a beautifully crafted, cleverly understated, pisstake of the sort of biased political reporting we see all too sadly in mainstream media nowadays, both in the UK and Australia.
“It’s simply a wonderful, wonderful piece of work, dripping in satire and irony.
“We know Jack can’t take credit for the entire piece; hence we’ve included as the authors the sub-editors who wrote the preamble for the tome and the artists for the way the novel has been brilliantly presented.
“I mean, really, who said hyperbole was dead as a literary device! The poll no-one saw coming! Shock waves will be felt across Queensland! The Labor Government and the ALP in turmoil!
“But most of the credit must go to the main author Jack Mckay. What an emerging talent; what a debut Hellerish in its cleverness and intensity.
“What an amazing, satirical effort and what an utterly clever concept to put himself deep inside the mind of someone who knows absolutely nothing about politics and who then proceeds to swamp us with that deliciously executed incompetence as he strives to please his editorial masters.”
The Booker spokesperson said the entire office was still stunned by Mckay’s genius in creating a deeply flawed character who could present a poll taken some 570 days out from the next state election as putting the LNP “in the box seat” to govern.
“Box seat indeed! You’ve got to admit that is very, very funny!
“And all on the basis of the LNP holding a slim 51-49 two-party lead after months and months of the mainstream media banging on about how awful Annastacia Palaszczuk is, and based on a poll of just over 1000 with a margin of error of, what, 4 to 5 percent? A brilliant gigglefest from beginning to end!
“And look for those tiny little hooks that let a sophisticated reader in on McKay’s joke. Here’s a yarn about a Premier supposedly on the ropes and so unpopular she’s heading for electoral wipeout yet a lousy 1 per cent rise in LNP fortunes on several markers represents a “jump”! Absolutely delicious! We have a master craftsman at work here in Jack McKay.
“Against a Premier in the absolute pits, little whinny David Crisafulli “jumps” 1 per cent as preferred Premier and he can now supposedly start penciling in his ministry come late October next year? It’s early days yet but my hunch is that Jack Mckay will end his career as a master storyteller without peer!
“This really is fantasy/humour writing at its finest and were I allowed, I’d fancy a little flutter on this year’s winner.”
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